The ‘M’ Conundrum- In defense of Chetan Bhagat

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Chetan Bhagat, in one of his Sunday columns for The Times of India on Jun 14, while explaining how Modi can win 2014, said this: “However, this doesn’t mean there should be nothing Hindu about the campaign. If the Congress will target Muslims, BJP may have little choice but to target Hindus”. Simple and straight, without mincing any words.

Most columnists, in trying to understand the electoral arithmetic that can drive a potential Modi victory in 2014, would say the same but what Bhagat says in two sentences they would say in three paragraphs, dress it up in ‘acceptable Op Ed Lexicon’, use all vocabulary available to them and yet not make the same impact as Bhagat. This is the strength of Chetan Bhagat, Columnist and best-selling author whose books sell more than any Indian writer writing in English.

Chetan Bhagat, the author is popular, darling of young India, unconventional (an IIT and IIM graduate who gave up his job to become a full time writer), humorous and quietly provocative in his works of fiction. He tells entertaining stories, is rarely didactic, derives from his own experiences and writes simple English prose that even first generation learners who graduate from ordinary schools understand and identify with. The New York Times has called him the ‘the biggest selling English language novelist in India’s history.’ Time magazine has named him in the ‘100 Most Influential People in the world’. Chetan Bhagat, to put it simply, is quite a phenomenon in literary circuit. His books sell like hot cakes, his publishers covet him and his peers envy him.

Bhagat’s popularity was accepted, albeit grudgingly, by the cocktail circuit of movers and shakers of India. There was no way they could reach his popularity or sell one tenth of the books he sold. They would criticize his writing skills but they could hardly ignore him. Then something unthinkable happened. Chetan Bhagat started displaying his political leanings. Horror of horrors, he seemed not too keen to be part of left liberal glitterati of fashionable India. That was the breaking point. No more would Bhagat be criticized in hushed tones in living rooms of big and famous over wine and cheese. He was ridiculed openly; his books began to be criticized viciously, his literary talent dismissed and his politics made fun of. All this by a small coterie of ‘networked and connected’ and Page 3 regulars who probably pay each other to get their books and columns read or reviewed and pay newspapers to publish their pictures.

Chetan Bhagat however marches on. His latest novel Revolution 2020 was a bestseller, his columns for various newspapers are popular and he is a sought after motivational speaker. His weekly columns, primarily aimed at young India continue to be mildly provocative, entertaining and informal. He refuses to adhere to accepted Op Ed language (whatever that may be) and continues to be direct and crisp.

All this background was essential to understand the storm in the teacup that Bhagat’s latest column in the Times of India titled ‘Letter from an Indian Muslim youth’ unleashed. Bhagat wrote in first person and wrote on behalf of an ordinary Muslim youth. He wrote about jobs, houses, security, dignity and education that a Muslim youth demands from a political system. He wrote about being part of aspirational India and not being yoked to clichés and stereotypes. He demanded level playing field, opportunities and warned against using Muslims as vote banks.

As a young Muslim writing the letter he rejected victimhood narrative and sought to be part of mainstream narrative. This is nothing new. Few writers while dealing with Muslim conundrum have often said that Muslims, because of being the largest minority group in India, have often been manipulated for vote banks. Sham of secularism that plays in our country ensures that Muslims are wooed around elections and promptly dumped afterwards. Bhagat’s column seems a continuation of the same thought. Unfortunately columns in our country are assessed not by WHAT is written in them but WHO has written them.

Given Bhagat’s political persuasion, the fact that he chose to write about young Muslims and also assumed to be one while writing, horrified the chattering class. Had the same column in the same tone and narrative technique been written by somebody of left liberal persuasion he would have been heralded for ‘reaching out’, ‘starting a dialogue’ ‘acting as a bridge’ and ‘narrowing the chasm between two communities’. Bhagat however was accused of just the opposite.

Words like ‘patronizing’, ‘condescending’ ‘majoritarian agenda’ were bandied about liberally. I checked many twitter timelines to discover that those frothing the most had not even bothered to read the column. Just the name Chetan Bhagat was enough for them to criticize for no reason or rhyme. Bhagat is hated for his guts to stand against the tide and when he writes about Muslim conundrum (sole prerogative of so called secular crowd) he could just not be forgiven.

Everyone agrees that not all Muslims have been able to become part of mainstream narrative just like not all Dalits and Tribals have become part of Emerging India story yet. Education and Development needs to reach everyone including Muslims. There is a lacuna in Muslim leadership. Those representing Muslims are not necessarily their best representatives. On one hand we have Owaisi brothers who are rabid Islamists or we have people like Salmaan Khurshid who will say one thing in Lutyen’s Delhi and say something completely different in Farrukhabad in UP.

These are not just problems of Muslims. These are problem for all of us. I found it completely ridiculous that people were furious with Bhagat for appropriating the voice of a young Muslim. Week after Week after Week, this chattering class claims to speak on behalf of all Indians when they write stuff like ‘Modi is a divisive figure’, ‘BJP is a party of upper class bigots’ or ‘Muslims will never vote for BJP’. Such sweeping statements are thrown at us casually but Bhagat is viciously criticized for speaking on behalf of Muslims.

Bhagat was criticized because he suddenly occupied the spot, that vocal bunch who call themselves secularists and believe only they have the best interest of Muslims in their mind, have been occupying for years. It is they who have been speaking on behalf of Muslims. Ordinary Muslims have welcomed the column as was evident from the responses Bhagat received on Twitter.

No wonder the vocal, chattering class felt threatened because for years they have been selling victim hood narrative and encouraging the divisiveness in the name of secularism. Here comes an upstart who threatens to puncture that narrative, who tells Muslims that they have a right to demand equality, they should be seeking no handouts but opportunities, no reservations but enough jobs for all to compete, security and dignity that is guaranteed to them by our constitution.

A young and educated 21 year old Muslim boy in a remote village of UP, who saves couple of rupees to buy Sunday edition of The Times of India will read this in a Chetan Bhagat column and agree because as Bhagat says Indian Muslim has evolved. It is time chattering class did too.

What proof does Mr.bhagat provide that the Muslim youth has ‘evolved’ ? Evolved to what is another big question that neither CB nor this articles’s author hasn’t answered. Young 21 year old youth in a remote village is more likely to be indoctrinated rather than educated.looks like both the left and right liberals need a heavy dose of reality check.

bharat2012

Good Piece Sunanda, I consider contents more Center & Right not (Right of Center impression one may get! )
My 1 line is : Modi Aims for 100% with India First and Communal Congress Aims for a Fraction with its divisive and populist, vote bank agenda.

Prashanth .U Ganpathi

Good piece!

Ranjan Sreedharan

I am in a foul mood today, so here’s the best line of all: “All this by a
small coterie of ‘networked and connected’ and Page 3 regulars who
probably pay each other to get their books and columns read or reviewed
and pay newspapers to publish their pictures.”

Ganesh Baskaran

Let the whole world say against him. His contribution to the Indian Youth and to the society is huge. We need more and more of him. Chetan Bhagat for me is `Bhagat Singh’ of young India.

Sunjay

The problem with Chetan is that he assumes that Muslims are “just like us”, which I’m afraid is not entirely true. I’ve had Muslim friends and still have many Muslim acquaintances, and yes as individuals I don’t think there is any difference between individual Muslim and Hindu or any person of any other religion, but having lived in a Muslim locality and observing them from a close quarters there is other side too which both leftists and rightists fail to understand. There is a difference between a Muslim as an individual and a Muslims as community.

The point is “Muslim identity” is an important aspect of an average Muslim’s sense of self, something absent among Hindus. Given that today many Muslims see economic development of Middle class Hindus and they see their community lagging behind, there is a sense of uneasiness and in many cases a large section of Muslim youth take to religiosity in order to compensate the feeling of loss of community self worth, and in that process falls under the influence of Saudi sponsored Wahhabis. In other backward Hindu communities there is a growing realization that education is the path towards economic prosperity and equality so even poor parents take great pains to educate their children, something I don’t think is happening among Indian Muslims, atleast to that extant. Also contrary to popular perception my very very limited but personal observation is that Muslim girls actually do better in studies than boys. So we have a large section of underachieving young Muslim males taking to aggressive Machismo to compassionate their insecurities and indulging in behavior recently seen in Delhi by bikers. So my point is I don’t think many Muslims are actually seeking what Chetan believes they are.

Rakesh Babu G R

I agree with the piece except for the line “All this by a
small coterie of ‘networked and connected’ and Page 3 regulars who
probably pay each other to get their books and columns read or reviewed
and pay newspapers to publish their pictures”. I don’t think they pay each other for reviews. But, they just do it as they are part of the circle. Just see the books section of “The Hindu” or “The Caravan”. Mostly leftist crap gets reviewed.

Shruti Pandey

True .If Ms Vashisht thinks that CB pieces like this will result in Muslims purely voting on ‘development’ issues and perhaps even support Modi, then she is living in a fool’s paradise. It might very well be true that ordinary Muslims wants jobs & development. But at the same time he might ALSO have Islamist views in support of his brethren of the Muslim Ummah. Both are NOT mutually exclusive as it is assumed by both CB and Sunada Vashisht.

Shruti Pandey

Excellent points.

Deepak

Chetan Bhagat appropriating the voice of an entire community (“Fictional of course”) is as laughable as Modi being able to win on a national level.

Vaibhav Sharma

Congratulations to the writer this piece is very well written and very informative.

chetan connects with young people very well he is a capable man.

and does it mandatory that a muslim can only represnet the muslim community we all are indian and any capable indian can represent the indian muslim.

and chetan bhagat have that ability.

Sarab

On dot – as an individual and as a representative of a community a Muslim behaves in an entirely different way. There is more to it. Islam came to India as an elitist ideology, the religion of the rulers. Many of the local converts always had a sense of alignment with rulership. Following British regime and with the outdated sense of regalism (still preached by the Bukharis and Owaisis), many of the Muslims embrace a false sense of pride that is unconnected to their lives. Combined with the lack of a value set of higher civilized order (and hanging on to those of the desert days unrelated to their present time and space) it manifests as sheer rowdyism.

If you write just the last word of the above paragraph, Chetan Bhagat would call it condescension. Not an informed man who does not need to be given the whole paragraph. More importantly, Chetan Bhagat can only understand the individual side, not the community or macro aspect. He is just not trained for that.

nurava

Firstly I have never read Chetan Bhagat, but I can say for sure his immense popularity has a lot to do with his IIT and IIM tags. It would be foolish to believe that his best-selling books are only because of his English writing skills. I am sure there are lot of better English Indian writers out their better than Bhagat but they donot get so much attention because they dont have those popular tags to their names. Secondly I am not a secularist, but I am still critical of Bhagat of this recent article. Although his article puts very good views and aspirations that Muslims in India should seek, but what I found a little bit uncomfortable as to why Chetan Bhagat has to represent Muslims of India. Can you think of a popular Muslim representing aspirations of Hindu’s ? Can India be representative of a Pakistan or British speak for Indian aspirations ? I think rather Chetan should have emphasized that Muslims must try to seek such aspirations and to derive inspiration from someone from their own(ex. President Kalam from example)

Vaibhav Sharma

we all are indian and any indian can represent there fellow indians

nurava

If thats the case why should there be two laws for Indians Muslims and Indian Hindus ? Why do Muslims have problem uniform civil code ? Lets be realistic. Even Dalits(who are also Hindus) wont let Hindus speak for them although they are part and parcel of Sanatan Dharma.

nurava

Muslims will only evolve when they stop considering Hindus as Kafirs. So they are not evolved because Chetan Bhagat thinks so. Have they spoken if they have evolved ? Till then all attempts to give them a pseudo-evolution will be useless.

nurava

You must understand that for Muslims allegiance to their religion is more important than being Indian or American or British. Islam first, country is secondary.

Vaibhav Sharma

we can’t divide our country once again. and politicians are only culprit they divide us on caste , religion.
i don’t think common man have this much of time to plot consipercy against other its difficult to get a meal of three times in day for them how can they plot these things.
even they divide hindu on the basis of caste, they brought caste based reservation to divide us . they call themselves secular and on other hand they talk of giving a ethnic group reservation and we “common man” don’t understand there evil thoughts.

Saiswaroopa Iyer

Nice article. The anti-Bhagat brigade has forgotten the very cause it is supposed to stand for (atleast in books). A liberal attitude should work for eradicating typecasts and cliches. But they have fallen into the trap going against someone who (probably for the first time in the recent years) tried to do that.

Also, one would expect the criticism to be objective and say something like : this, this, this points of Chetan Bhagat might not be right because of x,y,z reasons and back it with data. Instead, they went questioning his credentials and authority to represent the community and what not? I thought a true secular should be happy if representations transcend community-religion borders. But proving our hypothesis right, the secular and liberal faces of India don’t really seem to have the same values at heart.

The consolation is that there are many common young muslims who would more or less echo what Bhagat said for them.

http://desicontrarian.wordpress.com/ Contrarian

Payment may be just “you glowingly review my work, and I glowingly review yours”. The leftist crap gets peddled and reinforces the opinions of leftist crappies. You see, we need to know about intangible forms of payment :-). What does NOT merit review is the most important part here.

pp_chn

And people like this author and CB who, falsely/ naively advocating equal rights to a conquering ideology-espousing group, is one of the main reasons why Hindus are under a demographic siege. Unfortunately the ordinary Hindus, like those who are prohibited to pray in Bhagyalakshmi Mandir between 12 – 3 PM , have to pay the price for this ‘equality’ nonsense and CB can protect himself with all that money he earned from advocating equality.

pp_chn

Common man doesn’t have time to plot, I agree but the elites do. Those elites are rabidly anti-Hindu and pro Muslim & pro Christian. It’s easy to whip these two groups to turn against the majority Hindus as they are ideologically suited for the task. Secondly, it’s irritating to see Hindus who see nothing wrong in having a Muslim/Xn representatives who can codify laws like Hindu marriage act & take over of Hindu temples. Remember these two groups’ ancestors, tortured (our) Hindus’ ancestors not too long ago. Where is the sense of history of The surviving Hindus? Is this the gratitude that we pay for our ancestors’ troubles?

tweedle

Forget about muslim representing hindus, we have a muslim law minister(salman khurshid) who has changed the hindu marriage laws. Is that unacceptable to you? Are you even aware of that?
We have two laws, and that’s plain wrong. Uniform Civil Code has been made a desirable objective of the constitution, and but for the appeasement politics of Nehru, we would have had it long time ago. It is the continued state of different laws which is hampering India’s progress.

Aditya Kadambi

I don’t think the Congress shills in the media understand how ironic it is when they claim CM Modi is a divisive figure.
No one is more divisive than the core of the INC, the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty!
It is this polarisation that created the JP movement & later the BJP & now BJP 2.0.

We all know who your loyalty is with. You have made a valiant effort to misguide Muslims of India. However, the clever fiction writer in you is missing in this article as you have not showcased the other side of the coin which is that of those politicians who facilitate rape of Muslim women, cutting open the stomach of thosepregnant, setting alight innocent Muslims, spreading hatred between Hindus and Muslims, imprisonment of hundreds of Muslim youths on fabricated charges, using lower caste Hindus with false promises of rewards to terrorize and kill Muslim neighbours, buying off witnesses in defiance of law courts to protect victimisers, kill Muslim youths in false encounters and many other actions.

Instead of writing a letter on behalf of Muslim youth,You should write one to Mr. Modi who is trying very hard to soften his image to make it more acceptable to Muslims in particular and masses in general.

Well Said by YOU ..,. ” Corruption is stealing, and stealing is sin. No true Muslim or progressive Indian can support it. ” ……. But you should enlarge the line .. “Killing innocent minority is a BIGGER SIN than corruption” . But, we have only 2 options.. “BAD” & “THE WORST” .. Thats why every true Muslim or progressive Indian should get rid of “BIGGER SIN” …

Now do you see how you have already contradicted yourself by assuming a fictional mode in order to write a letter as a Muslim youth?

hey pal, first i am an brahmin and i am very proud to be hindu and i agree with you on many points but what i want to project is that have you ever thought why every elite(politician) talk about muslims because they know hindu are divided on the basis of castes and due to this they don’t care about hindu as a whole but muslim are not divided and they vote to one party or choose a single leader. due to this politicians consider them important vote bank and do them favor. so first we have to work within ourselves and should eradict this falsely created discrimnation between hindu only then we can win and focus on other issues.

pp_chn

Every other politician will keep talking about Muslims as long as their votes are treated on par with Hindus’. Doesn’t matter if Hindus are divided or not. Exactly why equality spouting left liberals like communists & right liberals like CB are doing a disservice to Hindus as a whole. Secondly, caste is not a falsely created discrimination. Caste discriminated, not based on money but based on values & lifestyle. Which hindus in their rush to ‘appear’ modern have ignored / forgotten. It served a purpose and will still serve a very good one but for right liberals who talk about equality between different Hindu groups and want to remove the one thing that stood between the jihadists and Hindus.

Skanda

Because most of them try to judge everything when it comes to Hinduism – whether it is religions or caste or any other institution. Very few *seek to understand*. Fact of the matter is, outside the anti-social elements (like mafia, fraudulent ngos) and state institutions, money and power in Hinduism are to be found to be sustained primarily by caste. This precisely is the reason why missionaries and leftists have spared no effort in maligning and attacking it. And the proxy-colonial govts after independence have done their bit in further misrepresenting and perverting the institution instead of reforming it. While Hindus continue to derive its benefits every day, they fail to see on which branch they are standing. Forget the strong groups like landlord and trading communities, even those who advertise their victimhood the most, the dalits, are able to raise today not because they get sympathies as individuals but they are able to represent themselves as a group. The missionaries and leftists do not support dalits for any reason other than their numbers, the voice it that can demand and the manpower leverage they have by keeping the dalits in the eternal sense of victimhood. If only Hindus and their leadership realize where their strength lies, can they turn the tide of the downslide.

Joseph Anton

“There was no way they could reach his popularity or sell one tenth of the books he sold.”

Thankfully, good literature is not assessed by crass volume.

If it were, most historical literary greats would not figure, and many other medioc-rati like Bhagat would .

“That was the breaking point. No more would Bhagat be criticized in hushed tones in living rooms of big and famous over wine and cheese. He was ridiculed openly”

Not true. Chetan Bhagat’s literature was trashed even before his political views were. I would argue it is not coincidence that they come from the same person.
In this article, more than “left liberals”, it is Sunanda Vashisht’s biases that are showing.

Joseph Anton

If the author is really interested in an intelligent article on why Chetan Bhagat should not speak for Indian Muslims, here is one by Prayaag Akbar:

As is obvious, it demonstrates an intelligence, introspection and thoughtfulness that Chetan Bhagat – and I daresay Sunanda Vashisht- are incapable of.

Yuvamani

All CB said was “I want X”, adopting a muslim voice. This caused people to slam him for adopting that voice and speaking on behalf of muslims. It was just teensy weensily hypocritical because the chattering classes have done this for years and years.

As for the qn, Can anyone adopt the voice of another.. Why not ? Is it wrong for me a non sikh to talk about the problems the Sikhs faced due to 1984 ? Whats wrong with that ? Do I have to be a Sikh to talk about 1984 ?

The bigger question is .. Do Muslims really want X?” See this is where the commenters on CRI differ from the author as well as from CB.

Abhradeep Ghosh

I have a feeling that what the followers of the murderous retard Muhammad really want is a return to the glory days of the Mameluk butchers and the Mongol tyrants when they enjoyed 100% reservation.

They best weapon that they have in their arsenal (apart from real bombs) is the DEMOGRAPHIC BOMB which they are using with great joy to reap rewards whenever and wherever they can.

W. Bengal is a case in point where nothing short of a DEMOGRAPHIC WAR (soft jihad) is in effect. Bangladeshi Muslims are infiltrating by droves, encroaching on whatever little we have left and breeding like there is no tomorrow (multiple wives, 11+ kids, tremendous sense of entitlement).

Imams and muezzins, who are otherwise worthless and non-productive members of the society, are getting money (extorted by the present TMC govt. from mostly Hindu taxpayers) to get the namazis to vote for whoever pays them doles/ promises them greater sops(reservations in educational institutions and jobs)/ encourages the police force to look the other way wherever members of their community go on a rampage.

An indication of the dark times to come are the horrible atrocities perpetrated by Muslims in Deganga and Canning, recently, on hapless Hindu villagers. Both cases went unreported in all the major local dailies. Recently Muslim organisations held vast rallies in the heart of Kolkata to support the rapists and genocidists of Bangladesh.

Its a great travesty that Hindus are being subjected to the same horrors even after the creation of Pakistan and Bangladesh that saw the very successful decimation/displacement of the native Hindu population. I have a feeling that this would never stop until all the non-Muslims are killed/displaced/outbred/forcibly converted/economically ruined and dhimmified.

I have often wondered why Islam is called the “Religion of Peace”. It’s probably because it has taken peace hostage!